Well, you would look at those lovely well-developed crystal faces, for one. You would maybe bounce it gently on your hand and determine it’s hefty but not heavy. You could take out a knife and discover you can’t scratch it. If you had a plain white bit of porcelain, you could scrape it along and see that it leaves a mostly-black streak, with maybe a little green or brown tint to it. And if you wanted to make me cry, you could pound it into a pile of black dust with a hammer. Any or all of these tests would leave you shaking your head and saying, “Dana, I’m not a fool. You can’t fool me with fool’s gold! Especially not on April Fools’ Day.”

And then if I told you that there is gold in it, but it’s invisible, you would laugh in my face because it is April Fools’ Day, so I will wait until next week to tell you that there’s invisible gold in there. Well, maybe not in that particular sample, but we can find some that definitely does have invisible gold in it. Continue reading “Famous Fools for Fool’s Gold”→

Happy Friday, my darlings! We’re taking it easy today. Well, I mean, sorta easy – I’m spending my day going through the USGS database for yummy Mount St. Helens images to illustrate our upcoming posts. You will love what I’m finding! For a sneak peek, check out my Facebook feed, where I’m posting some of the ones that have tickled my fancy the most.

I imagine we have a few new folk now that we’re in shiny new digs, so before we get back to our usual routine, let’s have a few introductions. Then I’ll bring you up to speed on what’s ongoing round the cantina. And then you’ll have the floor.

We’ve definitely got a hellebore on our hands. Which species is the question. I’m not sure if our translucent beauties are the same species as the new ones that popped up right in their vicinity, but these are definitely fresh and healthy. Here’s a pretty pair (with a bit of Boo for scale):

Almost five years ago, Lockwood, Cujo, and I were kicking around Table Rock, described in Oregon Geology as

two overlapping tuff rings, one filled with rubble and the other capped with basalt. Several dikes exposed on the flanks between the two fed the flows. The large tuff cone was the first to erupt during a deep-water interval in contrast to the second surge when the magma encountered groundwater.

It was pretty explosive in the Christmas Lake Valley area during the Pleistocene, is what they’re saying.

Anyway, Lockwood and I abandoned poor Cujo at a somewhat shady spot and went hiking up the flanks of the tuff ring, encountering all sorts of delightful volcanic and sedimentary features. But we were not alone! We had help in our geologic explorations.

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There are songs that can put us back together when we feel shattered. Songs that inspire us to pick up and keep going, songs that give us hope. This one lately has become one of my go-tos. It’s beautiful in its own right. It’s even more beautiful when I need to hear a reminder that I’m actually not as damaged as I think I am.

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I’ve finally pulled my categorized photos off the external hard drive, yay! Now we have lotsa material to work with. We’ll start with a metazoan, as we haven’t done one of those in half of forever.

One of the things I found most charming about Pacific Northwest beaches was the jellyfish washing up. There are little round clear ones that sparkle in the sun like a beach full of diamonds. And then there are these much larger, rarer red ones.